Do you like movies where people’s heads explode into spritzing blood geysers after being cut to ribbons by Japanese ninja darts rapid-fired from the asses of bikini clad girlbots wearing Clockwork Orange dick masks?

I KNEW you did!

Unfortunately I’m not talking about the next Pixar release, but the work of a mostly consistent, reliably fucked-up Japanese exploitation comic gore meister, Noboru Iguchi. Recently I was introduced to his work via a recommendation to watch Karate Robo Zaborgar, a remake of a 1970s-era tokusatsu silly rubber monster TV show which turned out to be, well, just damn brilliant. And then by coincidence I got pointed to Dead Sushi, a movie where sushi comes to life and starts killing diners or transforming them into zombies (sort of Dead/Alive at the sushi bar) – and noticed it was the same director.

A little light went off in my head.

Funny how for a film freakazoid like myself, the films I’d see solely based on who directed them fall into the distinct categories of All-Time Great Directors like Hitchcock, John Ford, Kubrick, Billy Wilder and the like; and the difficult-to-pin-down category of directors who seldom disappoint in terms of whatever specific brand of schlock they’re known for – Ed Wood, Russ Meyer, John Waters. The latter category winds up being less consistent than the first in terms of delivering the goods – think of Waters’ later work or Meyer’s lesser efforts – but any time I’d hear of something that sounded mildly interesting, the name of some insane director being attached to the thing would usually make me hit play.